"The true religion with God is Islam” (إِنَّ الدِّينَ عِندَ اللّهِ الإِسْلاَم) and the People of the Book reject it only because they are “insolent one to another.” The Jews and Christians, says Qur'an commentator Maulana Bulandshahri, recognized Muhammad “to be the final Prophet but their obstinate nature prevented them from accepting.”

The passage also warns believers not to take unbelievers as friends (َأَوْلِيَا — a word that means more than casual friendship, but something like alliance), “unless you have a fear of them.” This is a foundation of the idea that believers may legitimately deceive unbelievers when under pressure. The word used here in the Arabic is tuqātan (تُقَاةً), the verbal noun from taqiyyatan — hence the increasingly familiar term taqiyya. The Qur'an commentator Ibn Kathir says that the phrase rendered here as “unless you have a fear of them” means that “believers who in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers” may “show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly. For instance, Al-Bukhari recorded that Abu Ad-Darda’ said, ‘We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.’ Al-Bukhari said that Al-Hasan said, ‘The Tuqyah [taqiyya] is allowed until the Day of Resurrection.” While many Muslim spokesmen today maintain that taqiyya is solely a Shi’ite doctrine, shunned by Sunnis, the great Islamic scholar Ignaz Goldziher points out that while it was formulated by Shi’ites, “it is accepted as legitimate by other Muslims as well, on the authority of Qur’an 3:28.” The Sunnis of Al-Qaeda practice it today.